- Joined
- Jan 28, 2013
My first thought after Ilia skated was "if the others had been on, they could have upset him." I considered that he had popped that lutz, and he had a couple of dodgy landings on other passes.Quiite so. When you are that far ahead of any possible competition, nothing else matters.
Then I looked it up... only two other skaters have ever scored 318+ (his winning score here). Yuzuru Hanyu and Nathan Chen at their very best could have given beaten Ilia's imperfect program. No one else. Ever. At least under CoP. I've discounted the slightly different base values and GOE (+3 vs +5 eras - this is close enough to satisfy my curiosity).
We all love our sport, and I like tightly contested competitions. But he really is miles ahead on the scoreboard - at least for now. Can this hold for another year? Time will tell, but I suspect he'll debut some other score grabbing wizardry for the Olympic season. A 4/4 combo does not seem out of the realm of possibilities. So those trying to catch up will need to work even harder.

Happy he hung on for a medal.